Location 06 / Echoes of leaving and returning
POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM (still) – Single-channel multilingual video essay installation, 10’[looped] (2022)
POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM – Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time – location 06 / Vouzela, Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal.
In collaboration with Curator Luis Gomes Da Costa / Binaural Nodar and Vouzela Municipality.
The work elaborated in collaboration with Binaural Nodar focuses on the linguistic and analytical constructs regarding rural areas and natural spaces, both interpreted as fundamental givens not to be taken as a simple transcription of the form, rather than a multilayered trama made of theoretical and practical understandings. Part of Niccolò Masini’s long-term research trajectory Islands of Time, the multilingual video-essay composition reflects upon the complex mosaic of natural and political subjects related to migratory processes from the rural area of the Viseu Dão Lafões region. From the end of the 19th century, millions of Portuguese emigrated, looking for alternatives to poverty, a subsistence economy, and/or a lack of job opportunities. In that sense, emigration still resonates as part of the memory and is present within Portuguese rural regions. In this rural context, various groups refer to different waves of emigration, those more distant in time, to Brazil, Venezuela, the United States of America, etc., or those more recent, to European countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. These rural areas are today the protagonists of a re-populating phenomenon in receiving people from various continents, in a process opposite of so many Portuguese who precedently emigrated.
POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM is a multilingual narrative composition that elaborates upon the practice of highlighting disappearances, a cultural affair mediated with nature intertwining meanings of departure and return. The expression Por bem a nossa casa vem means “you are welcome in our house if you come with good intentions.” Por bem literally means for good, but in Portuguese, it communicates the sense of something done with good intentions, not something is “done” well. In these terms, rural areas, ruins, and liminal spaces can suggest opportunities for spatial investigations and analytical languages of discourse within their territory of reference. A fixed image we conserve of a territory transforms itself into a simulacrum, a symbol of behavior and the culture depicting it. Reestablishing the discourse of using a multinarrative language that is attentive to and aware of the symbolism implied in its formation leads towards retracing the path produced and rediscovering the point, the place of straying. In as much as memory, language plays a crucial role in forming the multilayered trama compelling territorial identity; beyond time, space, and inheritances.
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POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM (stills sequence) – Single-channel multilingual video essay installation, 10’[looped] (2022)